Prank War
by trustingHim17
Summary: or "When Iskandar Added a New Item to His 'Not for Pranks' List". a mostly-fluff story peeking in on an eye-opening event during Machaela and Jesse's first year with Iskandar and Sofia.
1. Chapter 1

"ISKANDAR!"

Machaela looked down the hallway at Jesse's frustrated yell, debating whether she should go find him.

"Oh, go ahead," Sofia told her from the other chair. "We've done enough for today. How you can pick up a new language so fast I'll never know, but I'm a bit jealous."

Machaela grinned at the praise. Sofia had been teaching her Italian for over nine months now, and Machaela was loving every bit of it. She was good at it, too, picking it up much faster than she had Spanish because of the languages' similarities. She had decided she wanted to be able to talk to people by the time they went to Italy, and Sofia had told her the other day that was three months away, so she spent every spare minute studying.

She fingered her locket as she stood up to go find her brother. Nine months since she had lost the rest of her family had her losing hope she would ever get them back, but over the last nine months Sofia and Iskandar had become a family of sorts to her, too. Sofia acted a lot like their mother at times, which alternately annoyed Machaela and made her feel right at home, and Iskandar was always there as the mischievous grandparent, just as ready to help them understand a tricky school assignment as he was to play a prank on them.

As if confirming her thoughts, Jesse stormed out of the back room, leaving a trail behind him.

"Where is he?" he all but growled at his sister.

Hiding a smirk at just how not-scary her six-year-old little brother was, especially sopping wet, the eight-year-old shrugged.

"Dunno," she answered. "What'd he do?"

His scowl looked suspiciously like a pout as he answered, "He put a giant water balloon on my door!"

Machaela had a hard time killing her grin. She hadn't thought of that prank yet, but how could you support the water balloon without it popping? Trying to figure out how that would work nearly distracted her from her irritated brother. She focused back on him just before he would have turned his irritation on her.

"Well, don't growl at me!" she told him. "Get him back! We've done it before."

"You're not gonna help?"

She shrugged. "He got you, not us. I'll help if you really want me to, but remember the last time I helped return a prank aimed at you?"

Jesse pulled a face at the memory. Just last month, Iskandar had put shaving cream in Jesse's hair while he was sleeping. Machaela had helped with the payback, only for Iskandar's next prank to trap them both in a net. Neither of them wanted a repeat of _that_. Iskandar had been laughing too hard to get them out very fast, and Machaela still didn't know enough spell work to retaliate well with magic.

"Fine," he muttered. "Any ideas?"

Machaela shrugged again. "Non-magic? Try a more detailed version of what he just did. Magic?" A small smirk escaped. "You _did_ just learn how to cast a glamour."

A large grin slowly stretched across Jesse's face, but he didn't say anything as he hurried back to his room to change clothes.

From where he had just come around the corner, Iskandar looked back and forth between Machaela and Jesse's closed door. Beginning to forget his irritation in his plans for payback, Jesse had brushed right by as if Iskandar wasn't even there, and Iskandar, expecting the tongue lashing Jesse usually gave him when targeted by an opening prank, didn't know what to make of that. His questioning gaze finally settled on Machaela, who simply shrugged, smiled, and turned to go back to the living room. The Swiss nome was close enough to the Italian border to pick up a few tv channels in addition to the ones that broadcasted from Bern.

* * *

Jesse waited until the next day to answer Iskandar's unspoken questions.

"Machaela! Jesse! Sofia!" Iskandar's voice accompanied the front door of their unit opening and closing.

"In the living room!" Sofia called back. Turning back to the siblings, she told them, "For tomorrow, Jesse, be ready to recite multiplication tables. You almost have them up through eight. Review a bit tonight before bed and you should be able to check off tomorrow. Machaela, look closer at the presidents. Harrison comes between Cleveland's two terms, not Johnson. I expect you to have those straight before the test on Friday."

Iskandar walked through the living room then, on his way to the coffee table where he usually dropped his papers.

"You are studying American history?" he asked Machaela.

She nodded, shuffling through her notes to put the list of presidents on top. "The list is so long, I can't keep the order straight," she told him. "There's too many presidents!"

He chuckled. "You are lucky Sofia is focusing on American history instead of Egyptian. Ancient Egypt had many more Pharaohs than America has had presidents."

Sofia chuckled quietly. "World history is the next unit." Machaela groaned.

"Try making it into a tune," Iskandar told her. "I seem to remember someone singing a list to that fiddle song…oh what was it called?" he trailed off. "Ten Little Indians!" he said a moment later, snapping his fingers. "Put it to the tune of Ten Little Indians. The music will help you remember the words."

Sofia searched for the song on the computer, and a minute later a simple, catchy tune played through the speakers.

Machaela grinned, easily fitting the list of presidents into such a simple tune. She sang it through once, slowly as she fitted each president into place, then faster the next time as she got the hang of it. By the fourth time through the song, she didn't even need to look at the list.

"Thanks, Iskandar!" She wrapped him in a hug on her way to put her school binder in her room, still humming the tune.

He chuckled and turned to Jesse. "Does that work for what you are doing, too?"

Jesse shook his head. "I almost have the eight times table down, but not quite."

"You will get it," Iskandar told him. "And nine has an easy trick to it. I'll show you that when you get there."

With a wink and an easy grin, Iskandar turned and shuffled his way down the hall towards the first bedroom on the left, and Jesse sat up straighter, watching. He noticed Machaela watching from her room as well, guessing Jesse's payback was happening.

Not noticing either of them, Iskandar reached his door and, finding the door strangely closed—he always left the door open—went to grab the knob. Surprise lit his face when the knob moved out of reach as the door slid down the hall. Machaela grinned.

Iskandar tried again to grab the doorknob, only for the door to go the _other_ way down the hall, stopping again several feet out of reach. Watching over the couch, Jesse smothered his laugh in the cushion and tried to pull a straight face when Iskandar looked in his direction.

Shuffling to where the door seemed to be, Iskandar tried a third time, and for the third time the door slid across the hall out of reach. By this time, Machaela had given up completely on keeping a straight face, and was leaning against the doorframe as she laughed. Sofia was laughing quietly into her hand, and neither of them were helping Jesse at all.

"Having a bit of trouble, Iskandar?" Jesse's eyes were starting to water with the force of his laughter, but he still managed to get the question out clearly, if a bit higher pitched than normal.

Refusing to admit a good prank when it bit him (or moved his door), Iskandar's response as he shuffled to try again was, "Not at all. Door chasing is good exercise, you know."

Machaela laughed even harder at that, and Sofia had given up on laughing quietly.

Jesse kept up the spell another full minute, since Iskandar walked so slowly, making him try and fail to grab the door twice more before the door moved back to its normal spot and stayed there. The only reaction he got was a grin and a nod before Iskandar went into his room—and the satisfaction of hearing Iskandar's laughter from the living room once the bedroom door closed.

Grinning, Machaela gave him a high five as she walked around the couch to sit next to him. "How did you come up with that?"

He chuckled. "Remember the fun house? In England?"

The tenth nome's headquarters had been less than an hour from Nottingham. Jesse's choice had been the Robin Hood museum, but Machaela's day had been the Nottingham Fair. One of the largest funfairs in Europe, their posters had boasted over five hundred attractions, and Machaela and Jesse's favorite had been the fun house full of illusions.

Everything from halls of mirrors to deceptively moving floors had been in the three-story fun house, tripping them and turning them around with every step, and they had loved every second of it, going through the house again and again.

"The hundred-door room?" she asked with a grin, remembering the long room on the second floor full of doors, but only one door led to the next illusion. The rest had somehow doubled around and dropped them in the same hallway.

He nodded, mirroring her grin.

"Someone at that fair _had_ to be a magician," Machaela told him. "Way too many of those illusions have no explanation. Even Mitchel claimed he didn't know how the doors one could work, and his brother designs buildings!"

Jesse shrugged off the topic she had brought up before. "We already know several spells that would last all day. Why not illusion spells?"

Machaela was quiet a moment. "What do you think his next prank will be?" she finally asked.

Jesse snorted. "_I_ think a moving door clinches it. I win."

Machaela felt a large grin stretch across her face as Iskandar came up behind her brother.

"Overconfidence can be your downfall."

Jesse jumped and craned his neck to look at Iskandar standing behind him, but his only reply was to stick out his tongue. Even if Iskandar would never admit it to them, Jesse knew it had been a good prank, and he knew that Iskandar agreed.

**Hello, wonderful readers! Here's the first half of a plot bunny that beat me over the head until I wrote it out. Hope you enjoyed it, and please don't forget to review! Reviews make my day!**


	2. Chapter 2

The next couple of days were much too busy for any pranks. Their time in the Swiss nome ended, and they had packed and moved again, this time stopping in the Austrian nome.

Late afternoon their third day in Austria, Machaela, Jesse, and Sofia were in the living room working on lessons again, and Machaela was about to go nuts.

"Will you _stop_ humming that tune, already?" she finally snapped at Sofia.

Sofia glanced up from the paper she was grading, stopping mid-note. "What tune?"

Machaela rolled her eyes. "You didn't know you've been humming Do-Re-Mi from that movie since lunch? Pick a different earworm, please!"

Sofia chuckled. "Sorry." She went back to grading—and back to humming Do-Re-Mi. Machaela groaned and got up to grab her music player, uncaring that she usually couldn't have it during lessons.

Before she could get the earbuds untangled and the music on, a new tune started clashing with Sofia's as Iskandar walked in humming the president song.

Jesse groaned. "Not you, too!"

Iskandar looked at him from the doorway. "Rough day?" he asked with a sympathetic smile.

Jesse rolled his eyes. "Sofia talked us into watching that Von Trapp movie based a few towns over, and she's been humming the same song for hours, driving us both crazy!"

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to learn a song when you're listening to a song?" Machaela asked while giving Sofia a weak glare. "The states fit the tune of the president song, but the tune in my head keeps changing to Do-Re-Mi!"

Sofia laughed. "Sing the state song aloud once or twice. The catchy tune will get the other song out of my head and help you learn your song faster."

Machaela started singing, backing up and repeating states every so often as she got the tune down, and Iskandar turned to Jesse.

"Do you have the tables down yet?'

"I just finished eight," Jesse replied with a grin at his success. "What was the trick you mentioned for the nines?"

Iskandar motioned for one of the practice papers Jesse had in front of him and a pencil, then in careful, neat writing, counted down from nine for the ones digit and up from zero for the tens digit.

"Cool!"

"Then you just have to remember the last two," Iskandar told him, "and you know the nines table. With how simple ten and eleven are, you really only have twelve to do before you are done with this lesson."

"I'm ready for that!" Jesse declared. "Sofia promised a dollar coin when I finish all twelve."

"That is quite a prize," was Iskandar's reply, but Jesse was already going through the nines table again, trying to make sure he'd remember the trick the next day so he could move on.

Machaela was finishing her fourth time through the song as Iskandar shuffled his way down the hall, and the siblings gathered up their schoolwork knowing they would play a board game after dinner.

"What are we playing?" Iskandar asked as they cleaned up the kitchen later.

"Aggravation!" Machaela answered before Jesse could. "Oh, come on," she said in response to his quiet groan. "We played Risk last time! And I thought you liked Aggravation."

"I do! I just wish I had a chance at winning!"

Machaela grinned as she set up the pieces. "I don't win _every_ game."

"Just about," Sofia and Jesse retorted in unison. Iskandar laughed.

And she did win "just about" every game, winning the first three games by a long shot before losing the fourth to Iskandar, who had been sending every piece he could back to home.

Sofia stopped her from setting up for a fifth game. "Bed time. Go get ready."

Rolling one of the pink pieces through her fingers before putting it in the box and going to her bedroom, Machaela wondered what Paiten was doing right then. Was she around the table with their parents playing games and having fun? Machaela hoped so. And she hoped Paiten missed them as much as they missed her and Mommy and Daddy. Machaela could still remember Friday game night, when they could stay up as late as they wanted playing games in the living room. More often than not, the siblings would end up asleep in a pile on the couch at the end of it. Daddy would laugh at the "three peas in a pod, fast asleep on the couch." He had a fun laugh, and Machaela had always wanted to laugh when her Daddy did…

She opened her eyes without knowing she had closed them, finding herself in the hallway. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

"What's wrong, Machaela?" Jesse's voice said from behind her. "Why'd you stop?" He stopped beside her and finally noticed her wet cheeks, instantly wrapping her in a hug. "Family game night?"

She nodded. "I can't remember Daddy's laugh anymore."

Jesse just hugged her harder. They had gone through this before as more and more of their memories of their family slipped away, lost to time.

"We'll find them, Machaela," Sofia assured her. "I know Iskandar looks every day."

"I know he does," Machaela answered in a small voice as she wiped her face. "I just wish I could bottle up all the memories so I would quit losing them." She fingered her locket, then opened it at Jesse's gesture. "I only remember as much as I do because of my locket," she confided.

"I know you do." Sofia hugged her from behind. "And you know Iskandar and I both wish we could at least find another picture of them for you."

Machaela nodded into Sofia's side, Jesse squeezing from the other side. Soon enough, though, Sofia gently broke the hug and urged them down the hallway.

"Get pajamas on and brush your teeth," she told them. "I'll read you a story before bed."

Sofia told Iskandar about the scene after the siblings had been tucked in, but he didn't have much to say about it. The siblings missed their parents and sister, of course, but Iskandar was no closer to finding them than he had been the last time the subject had come up. The unit was quiet when Iskandar got up in the middle of the night, though, so at least neither of them were having nightmares this time.

Jesse's piercing scream shattered the night's silence early the next morning, followed by a muted _boom!_

"Jesse!" Machaela yelled, trying to untangle her covers. "What's going on?!"

"GET THEM OFF ME! GET THEM OFF ME!"

"JESSE!"

Machaela's room was closest to her brother's, and she threw his door open to find his room a disaster and Jesse freaking out on the bed, screaming and trying to climb the—now pockmarked—wall. On the floor, on the dresser, and all over the bed were small black dots, intermixed now with the debris from his magical (and probably accidental) explosion. Ignoring her screaming brother for a moment, Machaela leaned down and picked one up. The room was covered in small, plastic spiders. No wonder her brother was freaking out.

"Jesse!" she called over his screaming as Sofia reached the door, Iskandar right behind her. "Jesse, they're just plastic!" By this point, she was at the bed, and she tried to grab him and calm him down. "They're not real!"

"S-s-s-spiders!" was all he could get out, evading her grip and still trying to climb the wall. She suspected he would have climbed the dresser and up onto the ceiling fan, but each of those had a mixture of cartoon spiders and realistic ones, with the dresser sporting a single, large tarantula-like toy.

Quickly grasping the situation and knowing that Machaela was too small to carry him, Sofia waded through the debris to Jesse's bed and picked him up. He grabbed onto her, trembling and hiding his face in her shoulder as she carried him out to the living room, giving the sheepish Iskandar a glare on the way out.

Sofia sat on the couch, hugging a trembling Jesse on her lap as Machaela climbed up beside them.

"It's okay," Machaela was telling him as she hugged him from behind. "They're not real. You're fine. They were just plastic and they're gone now." She kept repeating the same thing, trying to reach Jesse through his panic.

He and Paiten had always been terrified of spiders, claiming the creatures were out to get them. With her Mommy scared of spiders too, though not anywhere near as bad as Paiten and Jesse were, Machaela and her Daddy had been the designated bug killers. Jesse had been getting better recently, and could handle a single spider, as long as it was small, but obviously finding his room full of them had been too much for him.

"Jesse, you need to slow your breathing," Sofia told him softly. "Breathe with me. In and out. In and out. That's better. You're fine. Iskandar went too far with his prank, but you know he didn't mean to scare you." She levelled a prompting look at Iskandar, but she didn't need to.

"You know I would never hurt you, Jesse," Iskandar said, laying a gentle hand on Jesse's shoulder. "I had no idea you would react that way. I am sorry."

Jesse's breathing had calmed down, but he was still trembling as Iskandar eased himself onto the couch next to Sofia, who was still buried under the siblings.

As Jesse clung to Sofia, Iskandar looked at Machaela. "Has he always been this afraid of spiders?" he asked quietly, trying not to panic Jesse again.

She nodded. "He and Paiten and Mommy were terrified of them. Daddy and I were the bug killers."

"But I have seen him face spiders before and be alright," Iskandar protested softly.

Machaela shook her head. "Only little ones." She held her fingers less than a half-inch apart. "And only one at a time. If it's big enough to make a noise under his shoe, he runs from it, usually to me. A room full of them, several big enough he wouldn't have faced them separately, was too much."

She spotted a dark spot on the wall right then and glanced over to find a live version of the toys in Jesse's room crawling across the wall. "Get that, please," she said, hoping Jesse wouldn't open his eyes and see the spider. Iskandar grabbed a tissue and quickly killed the crawler, getting it out of sight before Jesse could see it and panic again.

Turning back to her brother, Machaela was glad to see he had stopped trembling, but he still wasn't looking at her, probably embarrassed at the force of his reaction.

"Jesse," she sang out his name. "Come on, Jessebear, It's okay. You're safe." He still didn't look at her. "The tickle monster's coming," she warned, beginning to walk two fingers up his arm.

He squirmed and finally looked at her, pouting.

"I know that look," Machaela said before he could say anything. "Our neighbors were meanie-butts. It's okay to hate spiders. You've seen me with heights."

A small smile appeared on Jesse's face at the reminder. Machaela couldn't even sit in the window seat on an airplane. When they had flown to Tennessee for the trip that ended in the wreck, Machaela had had to give the window seat to Paiten after one glance out the window made her panic. It had freaked her out so much, she had insisted Jesse take the middle so she could have the aisle and be as far from the window as she could.

"Remember?" Machaela asked. "I can't handle heights at all. For you it's spiders, and you're better than me, since you can face the little ones. I couldn't even climb the climbing wall at the fair in England."

Iskandar's face had taken a thoughtful expression at this confession, but neither sibling noticed, Jesse more focused on Machaela's words and Machaela more focused on calming Jesse down.

Jesse unfolded himself from Sofia's lap and sat on the couch between her and Machaela, looking over at Iskandar.

"I think we will call that prank war a win for you," Iskandar said before Jesse could think of something. "I did not mean to scare you so."

Jesse shivered at the reminder of all the spiders in his room, but responded with a quiet, "It's okay."

"Is today not your tourist day?" Iskandar asked. Jesse nodded. "Where are you going?"

"The falcon castle," was Jesse's quiet answer.

"Hohenwerfen Castle," Sofia spoke up, her arm still around Jesse, who was sandwiched next to his sister. "He wanted to see a medieval castle and that one has a falconry program."

Iskandar was quiet a moment, thinking. "I need to check with Mitchel to make sure, but I do not think I have something urgent today. How about I go with you? Would that make up for this morning?"

A smile split Machaela's face. Iskandar had never gone _with_ them on their tourist days before. That would be fun! She turned to Jesse, hoping he liked the idea. His grin was bigger than hers was as he nodded a quick yes. Machaela bounced off the couch. Iskandar would spend the whole day with them!

Mitchel confirmed a few minutes later that, no, Iskandar didn't have anything urgent, and yes, he, Mitchel, could reschedule everything for another day. With that done, Iskandar stepped into Jesse's room and used a _join_ spell to reverse the damage and remove the spiders, and the group were on their way to the castle within the hour.

Years later, Machaela and Jesse would remember that day as being, in Jesse's words, "totally awesome" because Iskandar, of course, remembered when the castle had been built. Iskandar regaled them with stories of Archbishop Gebhard building it and two other fortresses during a period of revolt in 1077, and attempted escapes when the structure was used as a state prison in the 1600s and 1700s. According to him, there had been a member of the House of Life imprisoned in the 1630s who used a heavily layered glamour to confuse the guards and effect an escape, only to be captured again less than ten miles away and returned to the prison. The prisoner had gotten enough of a look at the outside of the castle, however, that his next glamour locked the guards in a room with no exit and released every prisoner held there. The reigning king at the time was so mad that all the prisoners had escaped that not only were the guards punished, Iskandar told them, but the man's name was forbidden to be spoken.

"And when we reach the First Nome," he finished as they moved to the next room, "you can find a memorial to him just south of the Cave of Birds."

He kept up the history lesson all day, delighting the siblings with all the little factoids they loved hearing about and distracting Jesse from his scare that morning. While the siblings wished Iskandar could come with them on every trip, they knew this time was an apology. Machaela, young as she was, could see it every time he looked at Jesse, and Iskandar proved it when Jesse didn't get in trouble for starting a food fight at the picnic site against a visiting school group.

Machaela and Jesse remembered the day for the fun they had with Sofia and Iskandar exploring the castle, which is what Iskandar had intended.

Iskandar remembered the day as the one that set the idea in his mind as to just who the siblings' true parents may be, though confirmation wouldn't come for many years. Confirmation or no, he learned a valuable lesson: as a prank item, spiders are best used in small quantities.

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